Y’know those movie montages where a storm has passed and the camera pans over chirping birds and dewy flowers basking under the gentle sun? This is one of those months. The darkest days of winter are over, and we’ve made it through the portal of the eclipses and out the other side. When you open your window this morning you’re inhaling the fresh breeze of a day that brings a little more clarity than yesterday, a little less chaos than the last six weeks.

That’s not to say the landscape is unchanged—rather, something in the landscape of your relationships is distinctly different. You’ll probably notice a few metaphorical sinkholes or downed trees where there used to be clear paths and strong forests. Whether this change is welcome or stubbornly unwelcome, you’re in a better position now to rearrange, reorient, and let the change revitalize you.

Revitalization is the theme of this month, which brings Venus—planet of “hmm, maybe it would be nice to touch another human…”—into Aries, sign of “I’m going to explode if we don’t do this right now!” Venus in Aries knows how to begin again, how to embrace the new, how to laugh off fear and gloom. Venus in Aries reminds us that after every freeze comes a thaw, and that when that thaw comes we have to be ready to leap towards sunlight and warmth. Above all, Venus in Aries is impatient for connection.

So if you’ve spent the winter hibernating, crying in bathroom stalls at work, or getting real cozy with your cats and comfort foods—y’know, settling into the idea of spinsterhood or a sexless partnership—you may be surprised by how quickly your desires change. Welcome these new desires as a sign that your life gets to have many acts. Pursue the desires you can; let the desires you can’t pursue fill you heart, too, until you’re saturated with the full reach of your desires and what they can teach you about who you are in this moment. Let yourself be renewed through this opening up to desire, passion, and even impatient, impetuous longing.

Find me for readings this month if you want some personalized insights about everything that makes you tick, and as always, for these horoscopes read your Venus and Moon signs first, followed by your Sun and rising. Use these for what they can give you, and discard anything you don’t need. And remember—you’ve got this!

Aries

Come back to life. Come back to your senses—literally. Start to feel your body as responsive, electric, interested in experiences. As Venus and the Sun move through your sign this month, you’re getting shaken awake. Enjoy the boost of energy and self-esteem this can give you, but also recognize that this month can add a lot of fuel to your fires, so if you’ve already been burning a little too hot and bright you might want to take a few cooling breaths. Some of you Aries sweethearts are chronically worried about being too selfish, and this shadow Aries anxiety could come up extra strong right now—remember that connection requires communication and respect, but that you also get to experience impulse, desire, spontaneity, and risk. You are here for adventures; let yourself have them.

Time to release: old dreams, old fears, fantasies and anxieties, all the potential futures.
Time to initiate: falling in love again—with yourself, with your partner, with a new lover, with your old friends, with the imperfect but beautiful world.

Taurus

The energy of this month isn’t exactly comfortable for you, dear earthbound and sensual Taurus. For you, all this Aries energy can feel chaotic, overstimulating, and hard to channel into anything useful. Remember, though, that too much comfort leads to stagnation, and there are some familiar habits you’d be better off ditching. Your first task this month? Stop tracking other people’s needs, especially when you spend more time caring for them than you do for yourself. Your friends and partners and colleagues and ex-lovers are all adults who can fend for themselves for a few weeks. Draw some hard boundaries with anyone who you secretly dread making time for. Spend that time reconnecting to your erotic side, instead. Whether that feels accessible and active or dusty and forgotten about, this month asks you to remember the essential, revitalizing mystery of your own unique sexuality.

Time to release: needing to please everyone, what would the community think, herding cats.
Time to initiate: reigniting your erotic fantasy life, loving the mystery, surrendering to unknown passions.

Gemini

Forget about the life you were supposed to have by now. Feel how relaxing and even luxurious it can feel to release your expectations about what you were supposed to achieve by now, and focus instead on the pure joys of who you’ve managed to gather around you. Round up your favorite queers for some wholesome or profoundly scandalous group outing and celebrate the fact that we get to share this life with each other. Romances are likely this month, but remember that no relationships happen in a vacuum—stay connected to all your relationships, and bring a bit of romance and tenderness to them as well.

Time to release: caring how you look when you’re doing what you do, needing to make a good impression, worrying about your status
Time to initiate: lesbian knitting circles, lesbian motorcycle gangs, queer astronomy clubs, sex parties, mutual aid societies with open borders

Cancer

So much of your heart is full of what the people you love are thinking and feeling at all times. This is beautiful and part of why you have so many people who love you—but sometimes you can get overwhelmed by tracking all those needs. This month asks you release everything that isn’t yours and reconnect with some burning desire over your own. Not the most comfortable mission for you, I know, but remember how grumpy you get when you let yourself get drained and overwhelmed. You have permission this month to be a little selfish, or even a lot selfish, and to take a vacation from being anyone’s caregiver (unless you are a literal caregiver to children or other dependents—in which case, go get yourself a massage!).

Time to release: having all the answers, other people’s opinions, looking anywhere besides your own heart for the truth.
Time to initiate: knowing how powerful you are, making decisions to get what you want, choosing what is right for you in this moment.

Leo

Coming out of eclipse season, you’re still sorting through a lot. Maybe what’s come up has manifested as crisis or loss; maybe you’ve learned some hard truths about what you really need and aren’t getting from love—or maybe you’ve had to face some ways that you haven’t been good for the people you love. This is a month to move out of the depths, secure in the knowledge that whatever you’ve learned in the last six months will help your relationships become more stable, more honest, and more intimate in the months and years to come. Celebrate your courage, your newfound insights, and have faith that the best is yet to come.

Time to release: fears about intimacy, working things out through intensity, expecting the worst, bracing yourself for crisis and loss.
Time to initiate: trusting your intuition, sharing what you’ve learned, connecting outside your comfort zone, reaching higher levels of trust in intimacy.

Virgo

You may have been recently hurt in love, or hurt someone you loved. You may be working out the kinks in a longterm connection that needs some extra attention right now. You may be several years into single life, settled into a routine that feels more ordinary than lonely most days. Wherever you’re at in your relational trajectory, this month asks you to reconsider what you mean when you say “partner”—as in “I want a partner” or “I’ve tried to be a good partner to you.” What do you imagine your role is in partnership? What is your partner’s role? Do you know how to ask for what you deserve? Do you believe you deserve pleasure? However you can, insist that you receive (and give) pleasure this month. Sex and sensuality will help you heal faster than anything else right now—even if your only lover is yourself. If you’re interested in finding a new lover, though, this is a perfect time to act on impulse and get something started.

Time to release: fears and fantasies about what partnership means, needing to be perfect or to find someone perfect, settling for less than you deserve, not being equally met.
Time to initiate: remembering you are an inferno of nasty love that can heal the world with your perverted imagination, or at the very least, welcoming intense and erotic experiences back into your life.

Libra

Love gets messy. You get to be messy sometimes, too. The more you stress about what you’ve done wrong, are doing wrong, or will do wrong, the less present you are for all the opportunities to relax and feel into things. You may be fixated right now on a certain problem that you can’t figure out how to solve. If possible, see if you can approach this from an entirely different angle. What’s really missing? What’s really wrong? It might not be what you think. Pay attention to any story you tell yourself about what you think someone else really wants, because it might say more about your desires than theirs. Let yourself own those desires, even if they make things a little messier. It’s totally fine and ordinary for things to be complicated sometimes. There’s a big difference between crisis and mess.

Time to release: working too hard in your relationships, worrying about outcomes, power imbalances, the need to be right.
Time to initiate: showing up for partnership exactly as you are, honest assessments of give and take, figuring out what you need to commit.

Scorpio

Some parties last way too long, especially if you’re sober while everyone around you is drunk. That’s how this month begins for you—you can’t see the fun anymore in something that initially had you enthralled. There is no right and wrong here, it’s just good information for you: maybe you need a different scene right now. It’s okay to drop out of whatever is starting to feel like a waste of time, like a distraction instead of a destination. Reconnect to your passions this month by noticing when you feel most alive—whether that’s through excitement or anger! Both are alerting you to what really matters.

Time to release: games and players of games, distractions from what really matters, not trusting your own truth.
Time to initiate: paying closer attention to your needs, small changes that can have large effects, believing in your power to heal.

Sagittarius

Your heart’s been a little exhausted lately. You’ve been through a wild ride over the last few years and you haven’t given yourself permission to really slow down and rest until very recently. This month reminds you that part of your recovery includes letting yourself have fun. Be sweet and flirty, be raucous and wild, get yourself dolled up looking drop-dead gorgeous and take some photos to tease the world. It may feel frivolous, but low-risk attention and adventure are just what the doctor ordered right now. You have permission to take things slow, still, and go home alone if you want to—but make yourself a promise this month that you will reconnect to all that is joyous, silly, thrilling, and heartwarming about being alive.

Time to release: hibernation mode, old versions of yourself, family baggage, the heaviness of your old heartbreaks.
Time to initiate: flirtations, parties, scavenger hunts, getting dandy, getting out of your house.

Capricorn

You get to unclench your muscles this month—the ones you never even remember you hold tense all the time, maybe in your neck or your jaw or your forehead—and trust that whichever way your life is flowing is the right way for now. Relationships especially have been bringing up your fears of getting things wrong (or being wronged) and you may be trying to control a lot that’s out of your control. That’s actually good news! You don’t have to control anything! Instead, spend this month doing everything that helps you feel calm and centered, even if the future feels uncertain.

Time to release: fears of failure, back-up plans, perspectives that haven’t helped, letting your brain win over your heart.
Time to initiate: coming home to your own center, being sweet to your sore parts, putting down roots, protecting the ones you love.

Aquarius

Now’s the time to pick up all your anxieties like stray socks strewn across your bedroom floor and lovingly sort and mend them and even toss out a whole lot of them that are just cluttering up your mind. Pay particular attention to anxieties about what you deserve and what you get to have—it’s time to take a serious look at the scarcity stories you tell yourself. Anything you’re trying to change, rearrange, or solve is worth examining carefully right now for evidence that things are better than they seem—or could be, with very little effort!

Time to release: fear of scarcity, fear of not being enough, fear of being too much, treating love like something you can lose or run out of.
Time to initiate: long conversations, seeing old problems through a fresh lens, laughing at new discoveries, getting buzzed on all the possibilities.

Pisces

This is a month of progress for you, of finding that sweet balance between over-giving and hiding yourself away so that you’re in no danger of letting everyone drain your energy. Here’s a hint: it starts with asking for things, even if it feels silly or dramatic at first. Try asking for the kind of favors you do for folks all the time. Asking is a magical act that creates reciprocal connection, opens you up to real intimacy, and—when you get the care you ask for—recharges your batteries so you have more to share with the whole world. Small steps are all you need to take right now, and remember to appreciate how much you’ve learned in the last six months.

Time to release: too much solitude, boundaries that are non-existent or way too big, feeling either isolated or flooded.
Time to initiate: gathering and holding onto the energy that feeds you, letting yourself be totally filled up, letting your body be happy, finding a home in your senses.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!